Chick with crooked neck

[Magweno]

Hey everyone,

I had another disappointing hatch recently, only 3/12 eggs made it and one very nearly didn't. Opening the unhatched eggs it seemed that they had stopped developing at a few days? Which is the same problem that happened with the previous doz - eggs all bought from magheranu on ebay (who was very helpful and kind after the first hatch where only ONE chick hatched and sent me this doz for free). They are A&M Texans crossed with Gold Manchurian I think.

Anyway the first chick that hatched has now developed a tilt to it's head. It holds it twisted at 90º to it's body, like it's looking up at me.

They are only 4 days old. I wonder if it has a vit E deficiency? Or if it's a result of being dropped on day 2... Little adventurous bean escaped through the closed up hole you can see in the pic and jumped off the bookshelf :roll:

It's eating, drinking and pooping fine, along with the others. I will feed them some mashed up egg, banana and yoghurt tomorrow to get their little bodies in gear, but is there anything else I can do?

 

[kegs]

The Chicken Health Handbook by Gail Damerow says that "Thiamin (vitamin B1) deficiency in starter ration shows up suddenly when chicks are 2 weeks old and lose their appetites. As they lose weight, their feathers ruffle, they develop weak legs, and they become unsteady on their feet. Progressive paralysis starts at the feet and works upward, until chicks sit back on their hocks with their heads pointed upward (the so-called "star gazing" posture). Chicks given an oral thiamin supplement may recover.

Your chick certainly looks as if its star gazing to me and hopefully an expert will be along shortly to give you some more advice. I hope the info from the book will help you out in the meantime.

 

[chrismahon]

Hi Magweno. If the other two are fine and it was the one that took a fall I would say most likely injury. Possibly poor condition of the parents that the hatch was poor and that will reflect in the chicks. Whether it will improve I don't know. It looks otherwise healthy enough. We had one chick that had half the side of it's head skin ripped off by enthusiastic mum demonstrating scratching probably. No skin from eye back to base of neck. But it was happy so I left it and now you couldn't tell there was ever a problem. If you chick crumb is fresh and good quality they have everything they need. I'd wait and see, but be prepared to cull if it gets significantly worse. Make sure the water pot isn't too deep as they can drown at that age -fall asleep in the water!

 

[Magweno]

Thanks guys, I'm not sure if it's thiamin deficiency as head is not thrown back, more twisted and I've had a stargazing chick before (very sad!). I wasn't paying attention before the fall so not sure if it was the culprit but I have a guilty feeling that it was and it has a twisted neck as a result.
I have marbles in the water dish Chris thanks! Katie Thear's book on quail has been keeping me pretty straight
Incidentally have you heard of using a rabbit drinker thing with chicks? it would definitely be cleaner as they would stop kicking sawdust and poop into it but I'm not sure if they would work out that it's for drinking from. (Guess the answer to this question is to put one in and see if they do!)

 

[kegs]

If it's possible to splint legs for spraddle legs, would it be possible to make some sort of neck brace to help this chick?

 

[Magweno]

Unfortunately the bulb popped in the middle of the night last night in the brooder so the poor things were at 16ºC when I found them, huddled together in a corner. The two stronger chicks were fine but the crooked necked runt thrashed around a bit and then died. What a disaster! Thank you all for your help though

 

[Marigold]

That's really bad luck, sorry to hear about that, Magweno - although maybe it was for the best in the long run, if the healthy chicks survived.With such tiny quail chicks it's probably not a good idea to try too hard to save injured or deformed ones. They are most unlikely t o have vitamin deficiencies at this age, unless the parents were severely malnourished - in which case there would be little you could do for the chick anyway.
I wonder how high the humidity was when you were incubating, especially in the early stages? Quail seem to do best on low humidity. I followed the advice of other more experienced keepers and incubated two batches dry, ie not adding any water to the incubator at all until Day 17-18, when I could see the eggs beginning to pip, or when they were possibly due to hatch overnight on Day 17-18. All the fertile eggs in both batches hatched strong and healthy chicks. I have read that too much humidity, especially in the early stages, can cause deaths in shell, so would be interrested to know whether this might have happened with yours.

For drinkers I use these http://bit.ly/K1qB7G - I used to use rabbit bottles, as did the breeder I got my original stock from, but I didn't like to see and hear them banging away at the bottles to get a drop of water, instead of being able to get a proper beakful. But as you say, the circular chick drinkers get dirty very fast. These are very easy to fix to the cage wire, much less of a fiddle than bottles, which is good as mine are fixed on the outside of the cage front which is also the door, so I have to remove and replace them when I open and close the cage. But they don't take up any floor space within the cage and the lip stays poo-free all the time.

 

[Margaid]

Such a shame Magweno but at least you know the other two are good string chicks. I'm learning so much from reading posts which aren't about chickens! Can you use these drinkers for chickens Marigold or is the "cup" part too small for them?

 

[Marigold]

I know some people use giant rabbit drinkers for chickens, so as the lip is bigger than the drop you get on a bottle spout I suppose you could, but I wouldn't think it was very suitable for adult birds. Personally i just don't like to see a bird struggling to get a drink, so wouldn't use bottles with chickens and I was glad to have found these drinkers for my quail. Maybe if someone could make one with a larger capacity and a bigger lip they would be good for chickens. However it would be very good in a brooder for young chicken chicks, which after all are about the size of adult quail.

 

[Dean&Laura]

I'm sorry to hear about your crooked chick's fate. I was hoping he/she would pull through.

But at least your other two seem to be strong.

 

[Magweno]

Yes sad the little one didn't pull through because of that disaster, I was interested to see if it would have been okay if that hadn't happened. Although running around with a crooked neck is a rotten way to live

Those are great Marigold, I have a couple for my budgie so I will definitely clean one out and try it with the babies! I tried the rabbit bottle and they used it but like you said they struggled and it wasn't nice to see, so they have a ramekin with marbles in it at the moment.

I think the humidity in my incy is all wrong but I don't have anything small enough to measure it with. It's an r-com mini, I have a humidity gauge but it's too big to go in with the eggs. There are three bantam eggs and a partridge egg in at the moment and if you've seen my other post (http://poultrykeeperforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=6358) you'll maybe know the partridge egg isn't doing so well as a result of low humidity (and my stupidity). So I will have to buy a smaller gauge and check it out at some point. The humidity definitely isn't high enough for quails to hatch and I always put a wet rag in before they pip

Hopefully the bantams will hatch the quail eggs more efficiently when they grow up